"It's really easy, doesn't have any side effects other than making the planet less pretty from space, and light pollution actually hurts a bunch of kinds of animals."

"Huh, I didn't know that."

"Anything that uses starlight has a risk of being confused by citylight."

"What other stuff is frequently done by sorcery?"

"Healing, cleaning up other forms of pollution, fertilizing soil, transplanting tricky things..."

"So we might be ahead on some medical tech and agriculture but I think we may have a generally less-concerned-about-pollution stance than you guys."

"Plausible."

Out of things to say for the moment, Annie goes back to staring-not-staring at Edie.

And it's not terribly much later that they reach the house! It has two stories and a basement and four bedrooms. "My and Emily's rooms are on the top floor. The guest room's the smaller one that doesn't have anyone's stuff in it."

"I see it," confirms Annie. "...I'm going to just adopt visual language for my weird sense. When do your parents get home? Should you call them before then?"

"Uhh what time is it now--" they get inside and she checks a clock. "Mom'll be home in about half an hour, Dad could be home any time from quarter past that to two hours from now."

Annie goes and has a look at the bookshelf. An actual look.

It has a lot of textbooks, mostly really high-level genetics stuff. There's also some science fiction and other novels mixed in.

"I'll want book recommendations, I don't know what's good here."

"What kinds of books do you like?"

"Old fiction - although I'm not sure how 'old' will hold up here, depends on whether I like specific style elements or just the stuff that doesn't fall into obscurity fifty years later - and sci fi that seems to have progressed past ethical kindergarten and eclectic other stuff."

"I can absolutely recommend you some old sci-fi. And other old stuff. Ooh, Shakespeare, you should read Shakespeare, hang on a tick, I've got a copy of Much Ado About Nothing in my room--" and she dashes upstairs to get it.

"Who's Shakespeare?"

"Shakespeare is a playwright from a few centuries ago who was so far as anyone can tell the greatest single influence on modern English. He's known as the Bard and he's pretty much as iconic as it gets. You should probably read Tolkien, too, he's the guy who wrote the language I tested conglangs on you with."

"Okay."

"I'll find my copy of The Hobbit for you later."

"Thank you!"

"You're welcome!"

Edie comes back downstairs with the volume of Shakespeare.

"Should I know any context before I start reading this?"